“All right; but dinner will be served almost directly.  Would you mind telling the waiters to lay another cover?”

About five minutes thereafter, when the company had swarmed into the dining-room—­most of them chatting and laughing, but the more business-like looking for their allotted places at table—­Mr. Percival Miles put in an appearance, very shy and perhaps a little bewildered, for he knew not to whom he owed this invitation.  Lionel had got a seat for him between Mlle. Girond and Mr. Carey, the musical conductor; if he could, and if he had dared, he would have placed him next Miss Burgoyne; but Miss Burgoyne was at the head of the table, between Lord Denysfort and Mr. Lehmann—­besides, that fiery young lady might have taken sudden cause of offence.  As it was, the young gentleman could gaze upon her from afar; and she had bowed to him—­with some surprise clearly showing in her face—­just as their eyes had met on his coming into the room.  Lionel was next to Nina; he had arranged that.

It was a protracted banquet, and a merry one withal; there was a perfect Babel of noise; and the excellent old custom of drinking healths with distant friends was freely adopted.  Miss Girond did her best to amuse the good-looking boy whom she had been instrumental in rescuing from his solitary dinner in the coffee-room; but he did not respond as he ought to have done; from time to time he glanced wistfully towards the head of the table, where Miss Burgoyne was gayly chatting with Lord Denysfort.  As for Nina, Nina was very quiet, but very much interested, as her dark, expressive eyes eloquently showed.

“It is so beautiful, Leo,” she said.  “Every one looks so well; is it the light reflected from the table?” And then she said, in a lower tone, “Do you see Miss Burgoyne, Leo?  She is acting all the time.  She is acting to the whole table.”

“That Albanian jacket of hers is gorgeous enough, anyway,” Lionel responded; he was not much interested apparently in the question of Miss Burgoyne’s behavior.

When dinner had been some little time over, the women-folk went away and got wraps and shawls, and the whole company passed outside, the men lighting their cigars at the top of the steps.  The heavens overhead were now perfectly clear; the moonlight shone full on the long terrace, with its parapets and pedestals and plaster figures, while all the world below was shut away in a dense fog.  Indeed, as the various groups idly walked about or stood and talked—­their shadows sharply cut as out of ebony on the white stone—­the whole scene was most extraordinary; for it appeared as though these people were the sole occupants of some region in cloud-land—­a clear-shining region raised high above the forgotten earth.

“Lehmann is lucky,” Lionel said to Nina.  “I thought his moonlight effect was going to be a failure.”

Miss Girond came up, in an eager and excited fashion.

“Nina!”